Gig or not to Gig..

I got a 700m coming in, coming wtih 2 X 256mb sticks.
Dell was charging an insane amt(250USD) to give me 2 X 512 sticks, whereas a 1gb stick is costing me 115 usd on newegg.

Is the 1gb worth it?I was hearing that it results in significant batter power loss..is that true?

I will pull out a 256 and stick in a 1gb, leaving the compartment under the keyboard running the stock 256mb.

also is it safe to mix brands?

 

Well, if you are only performing basic tasks, web surfing, then 512MB will be fine.

It is perfectly OK to mix brands. Kingston, Crucial, and Corsair all make reliable memory, good reputations. I've had a lot of success with Corsair.

What I recommend doing is getting a 1GB stick if you can - then you have 1.25GB, which is plenty. What kind of tasks will you be performing? You might be able to just get by with 768MB.

 

You can get Kingston ValueRAM 1 GB PC2-4200 (KVR533D2S41G) for $82.29 atm from zipzoomfly.com with free shipping and the best part is you can buy up to 20 pieces. You strike me as someone that needs 20gigs of RAM(doesn't everyone need 20 gigs lying around?). If I were you I'd pounce on it.

As for whether or not it's worth it . . . for that price heck yeah. You'd be fine with 512MB if all you're gonna do is surf the web, but a 1gig stick of RAM is not a bad investment. I find that I just keep on reusing the 1gig stick in all the computers I buy. I'd be willing to bet that you could live with that 1gig stick of RAM for the next 4-5 years. Until 2gig sodimms become commonplace and affordable.

Another thing to consider . . . memory is a commodity. They go up and down in price according to the market and right now the prices are at an all time low. Sure, in the long run the price of 1gig sticks will pretty much always trend down in price, but in the short run they can spike up in price.

And I seriously think memory will spike up in price shortly when Samsung's(one of the major suppliers of the memory that is used in all these sodimms) three hundred million dollar court decision(they were found guilty of price fixing on dram) finally makes it's way into their pricing.

 

If you have more memory, you computer has to access the hard drive less, which in theory will save on battery life since the memory consumes less power than the hard drive.

 

Thanks guys.
I'll order it up!